Aircraft flies with 'backlog' passengers, new ones suffer

TNN | Sep 12, 2011, 04.27AM IST

LUCKNOW: Call it a chain of errors. Even as an aircraft arrived at Lucknow airport from Jeddah to take the 270-odd passengers who were stranded after the Saudi Arabian Airlines aircraft developed a snag in its engine on Saturday, a fresh batch of another 280 passengers arrived on Sunday. Not surprisingly, the new comers had to be taken to a hotel.

According to reports, the aircraft SV-879 arrived on Sunday afternoon to ferry away the Jeddah-bound passengers. But peculiar situation arose when another batch of 280 passengers arrived at Amausi airport on their scheduled journey day only to be told about the backlog.

Surprised, some of the passengers entered into a heated argument with the airlines officials.

The passengers were later made to stay at hotels in Sarojininagar. Airlines officials maintained that most of the passengers were communicated about the problem.

The Airport Authorities of India (AAI) officials said that they have asked the Saudi Arabian Airlines to clear the backlog as soon as possible so that flight operations are not affected and no administrative problems arise. The problem will ease out from Monday as there will be no flight and so no more passengers will arrive.

Meanwhile, a dozen-odd passengers entered into a heated argument with the airport authorities after they were stopped from boarding the Jeddah-bound aircraft by the immigration officials as their visa had expired.

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